


parted pirates, how wide's the ocean?

by psyril



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Bonus Episode Farewell (Life is Strange: Before the Storm), Gen, Grief/Mourning, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25866985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psyril/pseuds/psyril
Summary: While Seattle was far away, Max and Chloe promised it was an ocean they would cross for each other. However, with William's untimely death, the sea between them might just grow a whole lot wider.Set directly after William's death, accurately (I hope) exploring the rest of that impossible day. Fair amount of relationship-building between Max and her father, and some not-too-excessive Chloe woe.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	parted pirates, how wide's the ocean?

She stood there, at the end of the hallway, beholding a broken Joyce trying to console a worse Chloe. It was so abrupt; only a minute ago her and Chloe thought they had it all figured out. All resolved. She’d told her about Seattle, and Chloe, in her often veiled but never unbefitting compassion, had taken the news in a way that’d given more assurance to Max than anything her parents could have promised.

And yet, just as that crisis had been remedied, tragedy reared its head.

Max cried into her hands. Over the years William had become like a father to her as well—not that she had needed him per se, it was only that William differed so greatly from her own father that she couldn’t help but be mesmerized by him and his antics. William was so easy to love, and his death, his inconceivable passing that agonizingly seized reality, shattered everyone’s world.

She didn’t know why it mattered in this moment, but for some reason the notion was unshakeable; Max didn’t think she should witness the Prices in such despair. This was their grief, not hers, she argued—and whilst she hadn’t intruded, Caulfield felt desperately out of place by being audience to it.

Out of place... in a house where she had her own toothbrush. It was all in her head, she tried to reason, but burgeoning self-doubt paired with her chronic demureness convinced Max that there was no room for her in this situation.

Quietly spinning, Max brought herself against the wall, shoulder meeting the doorframe. She wanted to cry some more, but found that tears refused to form due to the feeling of misplacement she couldn’t reconcile. Max couldn’t move, the emotions too intense, the shock so potent its sinking-in induced paralysis. Truth was, the only thing a girl like her could achieve was painful inaction.

Max, in all of her senses, began to detach from the present.

Someone went upstairs. Chloe? Before Max could hear the door to her best friend’s bedroom affirmingly shut, Joyce’s weakly-gathered voice rang out.

“I’ll call your parents to come pick you up, Max.” The words were dampened, as if behind glass.

 _Bang._ The sound of Chloe’s door smashed said glass and snapped Max back to where she was.

“Hi Vanessa, would you mind coming to pick Max-...Yes, it’s really him, I... I can’t believe it either. I just... I need-... Thank you.” No suggestion—no chance of Max staying over tonight. Chloe felt so far away, and although being intimately familiar with the Price household, Max suddenly had no idea how she could get to her.

After setting the phone down, Joyce took a short minute to tighten the ropes that held everything inside her together. Meanwhile, Max wiped her eyes dry, wanting to be strong for Joyce; or more accurately, not wanting to be a bother. She wanted Joyce to save every drop of comfort for Chloe... And herself.

Max stepped away from the wall before Joyce could see that she clung to it.

“Will you help me clean up Max?” If Max didn’t know William was dead, she wouldn’t hear the fracture in the widow’s voice. But she did know, and she could hear it, despite Joyce’s efforts.

Max nodded, meekly moving towards the dining table.

Joyce led her half the way, guiding the girl by the shoulder. Max was about to start tidying until she felt Joyce’s hand form a grip. Her heart was crushed when, in a creditable moment of emotional maturity, she understood exactly what it meant; Joyce was lost, and yearned to be comforted.

Max traced the woman’s stare to the photo of Bloody Bill and Captain Bluebeard that had been recovered from the pirate trunk. Her eyes found new stores of tears upon seeing father and daughter so happy, to which Joyce readily pulled her into a close embrace. Max ardently hugged back, aware of how much they both needed it.

* * *

Chloe laid curled up on her bed, face stuffed between two pillows. She muffledly sobbed into the dark, cushioned void, at no point believing she’d ever be fine again. However, no person could cry forever, and as her weeping softened from exhaustion she began to register voices coming from downstairs.

Max’s parents had arrived.

It killed Chloe to even hear them, because them being there meant that time hadn’t stopped, that life was moving further and further away from when her father was alive with every passing second. Her world had ceased spinning, so if only for a minute, she wanted to feel like everyone else’s had ceased spinning too.

But no, things were happening—the pace of proceedings could be glacial and still they’d be moving too fast. The perfect life now existed solely in the past; it existed five minutes ago and already seemed so distant. There was no pace slow enough to make this bearable for Chloe.

She shuffled to the side of bed and sat up, planting her feet on the ground. Resting her elbows on her knees, forearms limp, she arched forward to try to encourage more tears. Instead, a sort of numbness came over her, like she’d overdosed on anguish and was left comatose. Alive—awake even... but no longer there.

* * *

Max hadn’t moved from where she’d hugged Joyce, only now she was in the much more enveloping arms of her father. As they unwrapped, his hands went to her shoulders to steady the overcome girl. He lowered himself to her level so that their eyes met.

“Oh Maxine, I’m so sorry,” he said in a whisper, wiping his thumbs across her misty cheeks.

Maybe it was because she was thinking about Chloe, but to Max, her father’s apology seemed directed towards their friendship, lending credence to her fear that things being changed wasn’t merely the worried conclusion of a young teen, but actually the truth, as observed by an adult.

She shook her head in rejection, almost finding words to combat her gloomy interpretation of the apology before being pulled into another hug.

Evening had now chased away the afternoon, filling the house with the deepening orange of a setting sun.

Max was delicately perched on the edge of the sofa with her father, whilst Joyce and Vanessa were seated by the dining table behind them. Ryan wasn’t a cold man, but perhaps it was fair to say he wasn’t helpful during a crisis such as this; it wasn’t that he couldn’t be helpful, he just didn’t know how to be—at least not in a manner he saw worthy of contributing. Max could relate to his passivity; she got it from him.

Joyce was left to Vanessa, the two women working through the horror as well as could be done. At some point Vanessa had made coffee, which had sobered Joyce enough to allow her sorrow to manifest as words instead of just more tears.

She could say she needed the bathroom, and that could be how she’d get to Chloe, but why was she having to devise? Why was no one telling her that she should go be with her friend? She’d never doubted her parents’ wisdom previously, but now she was wondering why they weren’t encouraging her to go to Chloe.

Max looked over her shoulder towards the hallway, nearly sold on her bathroom plan. Answeringly, Ryan coiled a hefty arm around her, and brought his daughter in close. It was as if he’d read her mind, which to Max made his gesture seem like he was protecting her from going.

Surely her father could comprehend what Max was thinking, and so surely he was stopping her. She didn’t want to believe he was right, she wanted to believe she knew better than anyone what Chloe needed, but what could she do?

Maybe, just maybe, things really would never be the same again.

* * *

It had taken around half an hour for Chloe to come to terms with time’s indifference, requiring all of the water her eyes could spare. As mentally ravaged as she was, Chloe knew she had to start somewhere when it came to continuing to live.

Choe picked up a doll’s head from the floor. Charred and slightly disfigured, it had been blown off by her and Max’s pyrotechnical experiment earlier in the day. She pocketed it, and then searched for other body parts.

Collecting the scattered remains of sacrificed dolls? That she could do.

The dolls’ anatomies combined haphazardly as Chloe deposited them into the keepsake drawer of her dresser. Backing away blankly, her heel connected with something; the box marked ‘TRASH’ she had been trying to fill prior to her spontaneous pirate adventure. Hanging over its lip was the sleeve of her old hoodie; red and full of holes, with a white gryphon on the front. It was her favorite, like Max said. In what world could she throw it away? It was unthinkable to her now; she’d had it when her father was alive, she was never going to part with it.

“It’s your lucky day, hoodie.” An attempt at countering stifling sentimentality with her signature sarcasm. It hurt, serving to indicate that her old self was off-limits.

Between the hoodie she now clutched to her chest, the dolls, everything in (and everything that had avoided being thrown into) the trash box, Chloe had all she needed to help keep this new world as similar to the one she’d just lost.

All she needed... Apart from Max. She would trade it all, every memento, to keep her from going to Seattle.

The voices downstairs grew louder—no, closer? Both, which implied the Caulfields were leaving. Max hadn’t come upstairs once, and Chloe truly didn’t know what to make of that. But she had the opportunity now to see Max through the window behind her bed. The window they’d never dared to climb out of.

Before she could get into position, the front door closed with unmistakable reverberation. Instead of compelling Chloe to rush across to the window, it rooted her in place. She wanted to see Max, that much she could admit, and then as the low rumble of the Caulfield car engine reached Chloe’s ear, her inertia was explained.

She didn’t want to see Max leave.

It was a sight she was destined to see, but if she could go a few more days without reality actualising the image, without being haunted by a clear picture, she would.

Her rationale held firm until the rumbling shifted into a fixed droning, the car taking off eliciting the crystallizing effect on Chloe’s imagination that she thought she could avoid. The image of Max leaving was so entirely realised by the droning that it must have been the only detail her mind had been missing in creating the perfect imitation.

What harm was there in looking now? She’d basically seen the worst already.

In gradual surrender Chloe idled towards the window, haste forbidden by her assumption that she wouldn’t make it in time. Knees buried into her pillows, hands on the windowsill, she had to lean as far as the glass in order to catch a glimpse.

And a glimpse was all she got; of the car turning the corner. As though invisibly tied together, Chloe’s heart was ripped from her chest as it accelerated away.

Haunted and hollow. The sight was worse than she could have ever imagined.

She couldn’t even see Max.

“Max...”

* * *

Max gazed through her unfocused reflection at rows of houses just like Chloe’s. It was scenery she had seen so much that she’d developed a routine for observing it. She’d always look at those houses, and then those tall trees... that ancient street sign. Never deviating.

Until today. That routine was the result of things always being safely the same.

Following the street sign she ignored convention and dwelled on the inside of the car door. It was the drab canvas she needed to paint the troubling image of Chloe’s empty bedroom window over. It might have been a few years since it was tradition, but every so often, especially on those high energy days—the kind new in-jokes were born on, the girls would continue their shenanigans up until the last possible moment. They’d pull faces, make silly gestures, and exchange their real goodbyes through that window.

Chloe had been a no-show today—understandably of course, but Max had hoped, against all reasonable odds, that Chloe would be in the window. After being so powerless to see her friend, Max had secretly been banking on it.

She wondered if Chloe even wanted to see her.

“We could swing by town and pick something up for dinner,” Vanessa gently delivered into what was silence.

“Anything you want, Maxine,” Ryan added gladly.

“I don’t know,” Max admitted. She expected her parents to push the idea, as it wasn’t uncommon for them to want to indulge her.

Nothing.

Surprised, Max looked up to investigate her parents’ restraint. Their heads were tilted towards one another, revealing the edges of their mouths curling upwards into what must have been knowing smiles. The eyes in the front view mirror, her father’s eyes, landed on Max, and in them she was relieved to find sympathetic resignation.

* * *

“I’d like to go straight to my room if that’s okay.” Despite her parents’ display of understanding during the journey home, Max still aimed to employ tactful language.

“Of course, if that’s what you want,” Ryan obliged before Vanessa could have an opportunity to suggest anything else.

Max gave her parents a sweet but tired smile, and then went upstairs. Even with steps heavy from weariness, their dainty daughter made faint footfall.

Oblivious to his wife’s lack of motion, Ryan took off his jacket and turned to hook it on the coat stand by the front door. Turning back to face his wife again, he finally discerned her inanimateness.

With no warning, a wave of heartbreak washed over Vanessa’s features. It was like the psychological infrastructure she’d built to so selflessly accommodate Joyce’s misery was falling apart, having been designed to fill an immediate need, not to stand forever. She simply hadn’t realised it’d been accommodating her own misery too.

“My dear...” Ryan breathed tenderly, closing the gap.

A trooper though, she refused to cry, and only sought to rest her face against her husband’s chest. They had never taken each other for granted, but in this small moment it felt to them like they were making up for anything they might have not said—not expressed. His arms went around her.

Neither of them wanted to think about Seattle right now.

* * *

Upon entering her room, the first thing Max’s eye was drawn to was faithful Captain, her teddy bear, acting as the jewel in the pillowy crown of her neatly-made bed. Growing up he had become less an item of comfort for Max and more just a knickknack with a story—valuable sure, but naturally stripped of utility.

She walked over and lifted Captain from his throne, relocating the bear to her desk and propping him up against her monitor.

“You can help me write.”

Max didn’t see herself wanting to surf the internet or play video games tonight. In wake of the fresh trepidation she suffered in pondering her and Chloe’s friendship, online acquaintances and commitments were prudently relegated to the back of her mind.

Captain wouldn’t be in the way.

Sitting down, Max had to rummage through many cluttered compartments before excavating a notepad. A journal-keeper with impeccable memory, notepads weren’t much necessary in her case, but tonight she anticipated their dispensability coming in useful for what she knew would take revision.

There were things she needed Chloe to hear, things she wouldn’t be able to say from Seattle or during a funeral. Max was fortunate in that she’d yet to go through the death of a family member, but that same fortune had left the proceedings of such an event a shade uncharted to her. She assumed that, for the Prices, the time between now and the funeral would be filled exclusively with visiting relatives, leaving Chloe inaccessible in person.

If only Max had succeeded on any of the numerous occasions she’d tried selling Chloe on MMOs. They could be hanging out right now, in an easier, virtual world.

* * *

Max was an hour into writing but had nothing to show for it. Telling Chloe about Seattle had proven a days-long endeavour, so this, condolences, reassurances, and farewell, all in one message, was going to be, at the very least, the biggest challenge of her life—and just a notch above that, impossible.

After crossing out another insufficient line she set her pen down, sighing tremorously. The air escaping her lungs inspired a similar attempt by her tears, though they were thwarted by Max sensing inbound company.

The door creaked open.

“Hey honey,” her father sounded, his voice closer to its usual spirit.

Max grasped the back of her chair, the v of her arm jutting out awkwardly as she turned to greet him.

“Hi Dad,” she responded affably, welcoming the opportunity for a break his presence offered. Only as he began to move towards her did Max notice the plate in his hand.

He’d brought her dinner.

“You okay? Thought you’d like to eat up here tonight,” he elucidated, gingerly slotting the plate into her crowded work surface. The minimal space had mandated a degree of attention to the confining articles; a spread of recently-purchased photography books and a spotlighted notepad, the latter Ryan was struggling to disregard.

“Thanks—I’m fine, I just can’t stop thinking about William,” Max innocently misrepresented her melancholy. The desk lamp shone exposing light on his daughter’s quandary—she certainly wasn’t scripting a eulogy. Flesh and blood aside, this was why Max was a treasure to him: her prevailing conscientiousness, most of which he believed was innate, not instilled.

“Is this something for Chloe?” His tone was supportive, the question contextualized with a soft point to the notepad.

“It’s supposed to be, but... I don’t know...I want to make a tape.” There was undue timidity in her demeanor which the man, in a conscious bid to square his earlier passivity, decided would be addressed as soon as he’d updated her on the Seattle question.

Ryan went to sit on Max’s bed, “Come here a moment Maxine.” He tapped the spot beside him, and she complied.

“We won’t be moving on Wednesday...” Max felt a glimmer of hope, “...I’ve managed to push things back so that we can attend the funeral.”

“We’re still moving though, right?” May as well get confirmation before burying aforementioned hope.

“We are, maybe even on the same day as the funeral. Things are... tricky.”

“That’s...” She finished the sentence with a mental ‘bullshit’, voiced by Chloe. Max hadn’t yet made a habit of cursing, but maybe she’d start in honor of her unfiltered best friend.

“I know.” Ryan exhaled, leaning back until supine above the knees. “But it means you don’t have to get everything done tonight, alright? You’re probably still in shock—God knows I am.” He buckled his hands on his stomach, studying the ceiling.

Max mimicked her father’s recline. She could abide by his recommendation of rest to that extent.

Endorsing his daughter’s tape idea was next on Ryan’s agenda. About to continue, Max made the segue for him.

“I took too long to tell her about Seattle. I don’t want to do the same with this.”

“Too long? Did she say that?”

“No... but it felt like I was pretending everything was okay.”

“You were just afraid of hurting her. You still managed to tell her before the fact.”

“We could have talked about it, figured it out more. She’s my best friend, it shouldn’t be hard to tell her anything. I’m supposed to trust her.”

“So trust her. Trust that Chloe knows you better than anyone. I’m sure you acted just as she expected you to.”

A beat passed. Severing his upward stare, Ryan glanced at Max, who appeared stranded between agreement and denial.

“..Look, what matters most is that we tell the people we care about what they need to hear, before it’s too late. You weren’t too late, Maxine. It doesn’t matter whether you could have told her sooner; she heard it from you, the best person she could have heard it from. Okay?”

“..Actually, she already knew. She overheard her parents.” The pluralization, now only correct when referring to the past, stung.

“Oh...” He lapsed, his stumped state neutralizing the sting with muted comedy. Ryan wasn’t often stumped, so Max had to smirk—morbid as it seemed.

Undoing his fingers, he sloppily cupped a hand on Max’s forehead. “My point still stands... I think.” There was a humorous inflection in his ‘I think’ which, along with his touch, alleviated some angst.

She was more centered now, able to synopsize her concerns. “I just don’t know how she feels about it now, after... What happened. She -was- okay.”

Ryan’s hand drifted over Max’s hairline, consigning her forehead to his caressing thumb.

“Which is why you’re having a hard time writing?”

“Yeah. I can’t find ways to say any of it.”

“That’s why I’m saying maybe you should rest first. Things might be clearer tomorrow.”

“But they are clear, I just can’t... It’s all there in my head—I know I could get it out if I was just face-to-face with her.”

“Then maybe that’s what you need to do. Get it all out, without care for how it’s said.”

“I’d probably just mess up and need like a hundred takes.”

“You can’t mess up. You can only be honest. It’s what you say that counts, not how well you say it. Isn’t that right?”

“It is...”

Ryan hoisted himself up, patting Max on the knee amidst getting to his feet. She lodged her elbows behind her, erecting her torso.

“You’ll never find the perfect words, but... you will find the right things to say.”

“I hope so.”

Hands hooking on his hips, he adopted a confident stance. “You will. As your father, I know that.”

She sat up, “Thanks Dad.” Max had prepared to be her own solace in all of this, but in practicing what he’d preached, her father had said the right things. Things that -she- had needed to hear.

“Now make sure to eat that before it gets cold.” A warming smile and a nod to the food, Ryan then left Max to her own devices.

Closing the door to Max’s room, the landing was subsequently plunged into a murk contested only by the glow from downstairs. Ryan stole a moment to appreciate the conversation he’d just shared with his daughter. It’d been good for him too, and he was proud of both Max and himself for having capably navigated the fragile situation—Max in particular, as he’d envisioned at least some resistance to Seattle after today.

Yet there’d been no resistance. A trooper, just like her mother.

His mind strayed to William, who until now he hadn’t had the chance to personally mourn. There was a friend in him that Ryan never quite recognized, their initial meetings somehow establishing that the two men weren’t going to be the type to go fishing together on weekends. Deeming the pang of remorse over an unexplored friendship purely one of tragedy’s many ripples, Ryan thoroughly inhaled, thanked William, and pressed on.

“Well?” Vanessa discreetly asked. She must have snuck upstairs during Max and Ryan’s talk. He was neither surprised nor offended by the possibility that she’d been listening in, and thus didn’t inquire.

“She’s fine. Absolutely fine.” Ryan took his wife’s hand and peeled her from the dimly-lit wall she’d melded into.

The Caulfields went downstairs, agreeing to open the most expensive bottle in the house; something they were saving for a day that had been taking too long to come. It would be a quiet drink they’d enjoy together, because they were together.


End file.
